Northern dreams

From European Voice's Entre-Nous column

11/12/08, 5:00 PM CET

Updated 4/23/14, 8:50 PM CET

The Norwegian government goes a-touring.

Jens Stoltenberg, the prime minister of Norway (an energy-rich and fish-rich country somewhere up north) arrived in Brussels yesterday (12 November), with six of his ministers – which roughly adds up to one-third of his cabinet.

They held meetings with the Commission on everything from energy to, well, fish. The financial crisis was also discussed, as the Norwegians wanted to share the experience of how they bought Iceland, sorry, bailed Iceland out of its economic woes. But the Commission’s main concern was probably to get the Norwegians on-side on the future of the Arctic: the Commission will present its thinking on the region next week (18 November).

Neither the Americans nor the Canadians and certainly not the Russians are interested in the EU meddling in the Arctic (and Denmark’s Greenland voted 26 years ago to leave the EU). So what can the Commission expect from the Norwegians? For sure, they will send a friendly invitation to José Manuel Barroso to repeat the visit that made him, earlier this year, the first Commission president to visit Norway.

But any suggestion that the Commission should help Norway develop an Arctic strategy will be met with the same reply as the EU gets when it wants more fish: “Nei!”